Short Story About a Short Story
I'd like you to meet the Storyteller. He is a lonely boy aged 10 in the dormitory of a boy's boarding school. It is after "lights out". He has one skill that keeps him alive. Alive means that he has a place in the tiny community the makes up the "Boarding House". He tells stories. They are boys' stories for boys.
When he goes up to the Middle School, story-telling is no longer in demand. Sporting skills are preferred, scholastic come after that. After "lights out" in the dormitory is now about Do & Dare. The Storyteller is neither athletic nor academic, not is he an active participant in the games of risk. He tells his stories to himself.
I will not go into the details of his life here. Perhaps somewhere else. He lives a rather boring life in conventional society. Stories still make up much of his inner thinking activity.
Then one day the newspaper has an advertisement. Short Story Competition. It coincides with one of his periods of real disappointment with his life, and he decides to enter. There is a convergence of a current fantasy, frustration, and opportunity.
He writes.
And one beautiful afternoon the phone rings. He gives his name and a voice says, "Congratulations! You've won the National Competition! We'll fly you to Canberra for the Prize!"
Some personal details are required: "What do you do for a living?" "Is the story autobiographical?" (What a question! It's about shooting people, for heaven's sake!)
A second life has begun.
It isn't in the least consistent. It bubbles to the face every now and again. A few more prizes, some commissions, a poem or two, an effort at a novel, a pleasure in words.
One day a man asked him," How do you create stories?" He replied, "It's a bit of fun. You just notice something curious, and then ask yourself, how could that happen? And what would happen afterwards? For instance, I was in a graveyard one day and some of the graves were overgrown with bushes. I thought to myself, you could slip an extra body in there, and nobody would notice. So I had to create story that would have man there with a body they wished hide. Next I asked, what would happen after that? Then you give the ending a twist. That's how I came to write 'Moonlighting'.
There was someone else time I saw a newspaper headline 'Satanic Cult Naked Ritual' and a puny later saw a depressed seeing threesome of mum and father and boy, which gave rise to 'Undermind". That was more about a good resolution than a twist in the story. Mine aren't all the same."
"Yes," the man said, "But how do I get ideas?" "Well," the storyteller said, "I teach habitancy to progress their sensory perception of the world. Why don't you go and find a flower and listen to it. You might protest that you can't hear anything, and although some habitancy do, that isn't the point of the exercise. It increases your optic acuity. You should also enjoy jokes. They start off with a puny story and introduce an ending that's fully unexpected. Or you can be like Disney and just let your imagination run surely wild, and find a story sequence inside your fantasy."
The questioner looked a puny bemused, so the Storyteller went on, "You can take any situation and start your imagination. You're reading this. What if the words began to turn before your eyes to say something strangely different? What would they say? Or maybe parts of different words popped out into a new text, new words?
Listen, let's get moving! I'll start you off. Once upon a time in a far country long ago there was a Storyteller. He is a lonely boy aged 10 in the dormitory of a boy's boarding school. It is after "lights out". He has one skill that keeps him alive. Alive means that he has a place in the tiny community the makes up the "Boarding House". He tells stories. They are boys' stories for boys.
When he goes up to the Middle School, story-telling is no longer in demand."
And you just keep writing.
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